All white and overwhelmingly male- Latest departure leaves NC federal courts among least diverse in the nation. It’s been more than 3,000 days since U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard announced that he would be stepping down from his position on the federal court in eastern North Carolina. At roughly the same time, the then-freshman senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, stood lecturing his colleagues on the senate floor about their blocking of votes for nominees to the federal bench.

Tucked away near the end of the 250-page Senate budget, in between the section slashing funds for legal services and the section forecasting cuts to state cultural resources, lies a proposal which would change the rules of the game in which state lawmakers now find themselves deeply entrenched: defending their laws from constitutional challenges. From voting rights to school vouchers to issues of local rule, the members of the General Assembly are fending off claims in at least a dozen lawsuits that laws enacted during the long session violate state and federal constitutions.

Steven Pruner learned the hard way that in North Carolina, selling a hot dog can get you jail time. Imagine his surprise when, in 2011, the vendor was charged and later convicted for operating his cart without a license near Duke University Medical Center – an offense which got him 45 days in the custody of the Durham County sheriff (a sentence later suspended to probation). Steve Cooksey almost suffered a similar fate when, after fighting his own diabetes and sharing insights into his recovery on his blog, he learned that his advice to readers constituted the unlicensed practice of dietetics, a misdemeanor offense under catchall provisions of the administrative code.

It started with a flickering brake light on Nicholas Heien’s Ford Escort. He was asleep in the back seat while Maynor Javier Vasquez drove the car along Interstate 77 in Surry County during the early morning hours in April 2009, when Officer Matt Darisse of the Surry County Sheriff’s Department flipped on his blue lights to stop the car. The officer told Vasquez he had pulled the Escort over for a non-functioning brake light.

It’s a troubling story line: A well-heeled and powerful group with a vested interest in the outcome of a lawsuit contributes millions to land a favored justice on a supreme court where its case will likely land. John Grisham used it in his bestseller The Appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court considered the true-to-life version arising out the battle between coal-mining executives in West Virginia in Caperton v. Massey Coal.

If there’s one message to be gleaned from the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bumpers v. Community Bank of Northern Virginia, it’s this: When it comes to mortgage lending, consumers better shop around. And not just for the best interest rates and payment terms. Now the onus is on you, borrower, to find the best deal for all those ancillary charges that show up on that mysterious closing form – fees for the title company for example, or a loan settlement provider or even an appraiser.

With a rising number of divisive laws being challenged in courts across the country — including those addressing same-sex marriage, immigration and voting rights – some attorneys general are refusing to defend their states, agreeing that such laws are unconstitutional. Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced in July that she wouldn’t defend that state’s same sex marriage ban in a pending federal lawsuit.

It started out as a simple bill allowing parties in family court to appeal rulings before their cases were finally resolved. By the time it landed on the House floor for a final vote, one of the last bills on the last day of the long session, it had a new name, a new number and a new purpose: to give the justices of the state Supreme Court the sole authority to discipline judges — including themselves –and allow them to decide if, when and who to discipline in secret.